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Oh, and I guess I can add a new point to this whole discussion, one that isn't discussed much: PHYSICAL COPIES of said album. This isn't required for any album to have physical copies at all. In fact, this is more of a personal choice for the director of the album if they want a physical copy. There isn't going to be some big Kickstarter like there was for FF6: Balance and Ruin for your physical album prints. I think that was a one time thing and a legal quagmire that I feel OCRemix isn't wanting to delve into anytime soon. But can any album have a physical release? I believe so! However, there are some requirements first. 1) The director must be the one who impresses on everyone from the outset their intention to make physicals after album release. Everyone on the OCRemix admin staff and those remixers and contributors to the project need to be aware of this intention and be agreeable to pitching in for the final product. 2) You will not normally see a simultaneous physical and digital release of the album. The digital will always come first and the physicals months later due to logistics and timing, etc. 3) The director is responsible, with their art director, in securing all front/back cover art and disc art for the album. However that happens, either you draw it yourself or you pay a commission for an artist to do it for you, it must be something available and provided for the physical prints. 4) Split your discs up early into track lists where the run times are 74 mins or less per disc to properly fit on physical CDs come printing. 5) After digital release, you'll most likely be working with DJPretzel directly and once your request for physicals is approved on OCRemix admin, they will be covering HALF of the costs. The other half must come from you, the director. This isn't cheap, and the Arcadia Legends album limited print run went close to $2000. So about $1000 needed to come out of my pocket. You can either dump the change all yourself, or get as many folks from those who contributed to pitch in equal amounts of money to add up to your half. However you slice it, you need to provide it. 6) It is generally considered a good recommendation that you order enough for at least two physical copies per contributor to the album. However, not all contributors will be able to or willing to pitch in for the cost, nor will all contributors be willing to respond and provide you with their physical addresses to mail them. (which you'll have to do and pay additional for shipping out of pocket) So it is up to the director if those who neither paid nor provided address get physical copies at all - harsh truth, but needed to be said. 7) Once ordered, the shipment will be split, you'll get roughly half, and OCRemix will get half to give out at their fest panels. Once you receive your shipment, it'll be on you to make good on promises made to all those wanting physical copies. Once those are sent out and you have a bunch left over, the director can do whatever they want with them, raffles, prizes, etc. Just don't sell them! With all that out of the way, physicals are a neat novelty piece and a great reward for all the hard work for everyone who put effort into the project! It isn't ideal for every album, but the option is there if you wish to pursue it. Just know that you, the director, will be the one who foots all the work on this and covering cost when others come up short. So be aware of this! Now for those interested, Arcadia Legends physicals should be finishing up printing this week and hopefully shipping out by this weekend! So for all those waiting on their contributor copies, it won't be long now when I get them and repackage them up and send them out!

@Gario thanks for the criticism I heard it as well and mean't to do something about it, but I've unfortunately lost my original project files for this remix. I will submit it and provide the source so sorry about that.

Just to add my two bits in - I'm one of those directors that started out strong, but got a bit overwhelmed by life as time and a half went by, and for the last year or so have been having trouble staying in touch consistently. Most of the main points are stated above, but as a living example of some of the shortfalls of directing an album, I would add three things that I think are very important even in the face of the obstacles that will inevitably come: Always keep your lines of communication open. I have not been as good at this as I would like on my project. As prophetik says, everything is on you and people are looking to you for guidance, updates, and general status of the project, and when you stop communicating, people will draw their own conclusions. I have found this leads to remixers feeling alienated or moving on to other projects, as the assumption becomes that 'this is another dropped project by someone who doesn't care to finish it.' Even if you only tell people that life continues to suck and you'll be away for a while longer, at least folks know where you are at and where the project stands. Don't be afraid to collaborate or ask for help. You mentioned 'zero technical expertise' - that's why the OCR 'Recruitment and Collaboration' forum exists. Every project that I have seen or been part of doesn't just rely on one person's knowledge or expertise, it relies on a bunch of people - some handling more administrative tasks (such as info gathering and organization), some manage the quality of the music (giving notes on arrangement, mixing, etc.), some handle the stuff outside of OCR (such as professional mixing/mastering, cover art design, etc.) because they have the contacts for that - just as examples. Even if you don't know where to go from where you are, you can always ask for help! There's lots of us who have been involved in album developments in the past who are willing to give pointers or advice, as this thread has demonstrated. NEVER GIVE UP! - Life is hard and we all understand that things happen and sometimes when things get so deep or so far behind that we ask to ourselves 'is there any point in finishing this?' The only answer is YES, because you had a dream and other people have invested with you to see that dream come to life. It doesn't matter how bad things look or how far gone things seem to have become, there is always a reason to finish and there are always people willing to help to get you out of your cloud, help you get back on track, and help you keep things going. Projects will always progress at different rates, sometimes not as originally intended (Right @Rozovian?). Life will happen at some point and choices will have to be made; no one is going to jump up and down on you here because of what you had to do to deal with your life. What counts is what comes of all that effort - and I'm sure there are folks reading this who can attest that all the crap you go through in the album's development is totally worth it to see that album released and/or posted on OCR's main page. If you have the time, patience, and desire to start building an album; the vision, the organization and the willingness to listen to attract people to your project; and the unwavering enthusiasm and drive to see the progress made in spite of everything that life throws at you, then there's no reason you can't start to build your own album from start to finish - but regardless of how it actually goes down, remember to always keep your lines of communication open to the folks you are leading, don't be afraid to collaborate or ask for help for anything you are having trouble with, and above all else that happens ... NEVER GIVE UP! ... because I sure won't!

as someone who's done several album projects, here's what you need: time patience desire that's it. so little of running a project is technical know-how. you need to have a vision, which is what people sign up to participate in. you need organization, to keep track of who's where and what they're doing. you need to be willing to listen - both to a ton of trash tracks that might turn out good once they're worked, and also to people telling you suggestions and when things aren't good enough yet. and you need unflagging enthusiasm and drive, because without that your project will turn into every other project out there that's sputtered. the onus is on you to recruit, to inspire, and to follow through 100% of the time. if you like a soundtrack or concept that much, then do it. it's not just a matter of updating a doc. for chrono cross, i sent over 600 total PMs in ~85 conversations, sent 200 emails, and heard fourteen tracks that didn't make the eventual cut or weren't finished. i'd say a third of those had nothing to do with music and were follow-ups to get comments or to get stuff for the website or verification. it's a lot of content that you need to regularly manage. it's not a stretch to assume that i've put several hundred hours into it over the last two years, more if you include the extra phone conversations and text conversations i've had with collaborators.

Yea this is dope. Keep doing what your doing. I think this is my first time seeing a Yakuza remix.

maybe the ohm value isn't all that objective, generally. the 80 ohm 770's i got are just really quiet. with my 3 cans, the loudness seems pretty linear in comparison, from 32 to 55 to 80. what you say about 250 vs. 63 ohms tells a different story! could be i just don't dig the sound of the 770's that much. at fully cranked up, it sounds barely loud enough but just not that good. pretty spacious but lacking power. maybe i just need a critical amount of volume to feel good about the sound, i don't know. i've noticed that i like many consumer level headphones if the sound is direct and not obviously distorted/relatively flat. i mixed 2 or 3 songs of last year on cheap sennheiser headphones and those sounded good on expensive monitors, as well. it's got to do with being lucky and the mix in question, for sure.

This is pretty damn amazing.

EVAL Oh, this sounds pretty kickin'. Production is clean, and the track sounds pretty kickin' to boot; almost sounds like it could've been in Persona 5, which believe me is a compliment (great freakin' soundtrack). Would've loved a source link, though; looking for an arrangement online on our own isn't too fun. I'm not sure how the arrangement connects with the source that I found, either - could be the case that I found the wrong source to compare to. A suggestion if you submit this: if you are confident that the source is certainly represented in the track (at least 50% of your arrangement being identifiable as the source, at least), provide some timestamps in your submission e-mail. Minor criticism: on your faster instruments the reverb creates high frequency mud, which sounds like an unnecessary hiss throughout those faster parts. It's not something that'd sink the track on the panel, but it's something you could try to avoid in future arrangements by using less reverb on your more nimble instruments. Aside from that, I think you should submit it, as long as you can provide the source in the e-mail as well as the timestamps I suggested above. Looking forward to seeing it on the panel.

When posting a new topic, ou can choose one of the four preset prefixes. The default prefix is 1. work-in-progress. As you get feedback and develop your track, change the prefix accordingly to indicate the status of your track. This helps the evaluation team keep tabs on your track. Here are the prefixes and what they mean: work-in-progress Your track is a work-in-progress and you need feedback from the community. This is the default prefix. ready for review Change your prefix to this when you want a workshop evaluator to give your track an official look. Once they provide you with feedback, they'll change your track back to 1. work-in-progress. completed Change your prefix to this when you feel you're done with your track. submitted Change your prefix to this once you have submitted your completed track to the Judges Panel. As you can see we've numbered the prefixes to help you iterate through the process, but if you want to jump ahead and just post a completed track that doesn't require review, you can do that with the appropriate prefix as well.